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Psaki describes effort to promote vaccine confidence in ‘white conservative communities’

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The Biden administration is focusing its efforts on strengthening vaccine confidence in “white conservative communities” by promoting the vaccine on NASCAR, the country music television channel and shows like “Deadliest Catch,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Monday.

At a White House press briefing on Monday, a reporter asked what efforts were being taken to push vaccines in rural states like Mississippi, Ohio and Oklahoma where they were “having a hard time getting folks vaccinated.” The reporter cited that vaccination rates were only at 34% in these states.

Psaki said a large number of steps were being taken to strengthen vaccine confidence in “the highest-risk and hardest-hit communities” such as “conservative communities, white evangelicals.”

“We’ve run PSAs on ‘The Deadliest Catch,’ we’re engaged with NASCAR and Country Music TV,” Psaki said.

“We’re looking for a range of creative ways to get directly connected to white conservative communities. We won’t always be the best messengers, but we’re still trying to meet people where they are, but also empower local organizations,” she continued.

A recent poll by the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation found that Republicans and white evangelical Christians were most likely to refuse the Covid vaccination with almost 30% of each group saying they’ll “definitely not” get vaccinated.

Many are worried that this will impact herd immunity.

President Joe Biden announced a $10 billion investment in March to strengthen “vaccine confidence” in hardest-hit, highest-risk communities.

$3 billion went to strengthening vaccine confidence, according to a White House briefing.

Follow Annaliese Levy on Twitter @AnnalieseLevy

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COVID-19

Former Harvard medical professor says he was fired for opposing Covid lockdowns and vaccine mandates

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Covid

“My hope is that someday, Harvard will find its way back to academic freedom and independence.” That is the heartfelt message from Dr. Martin Kulldorff, a former Harvard University professor of medicine since 2003, who recently announced publicly he was fired for “clinging to the truth” in his opposition to Covid lockdowns and vaccine mandates.

Kulldorff posted the news on social media alongside an essay published in the City Journal last week. The epidemiologist and biostatistician also spoke with National Review about the incident. Kulldorff says he was fired by the Harvard-affiliated Mass General Brigham hospital system and put on a leave of absence by Harvard Medical School in November 2021 over his stance on Covid.

Nearly two years later, in October 2023, his leave of absence was terminated as a matter of policy, marking the end of his time at the university. Harvard severed ties with Kulldorff “all on their initiative,” he said.

The history of the medical professional’s public stance on Covid-19 vaccines and mandates is detailed by National Review:

Censorship and rejection led Kulldorff to co-author the Great Barrington Declaration in October 2020 alongside Dr. Sunetra Gupta of Oxford University and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford University. Together, the three public-health scientists argued for limited and targeted Covid-19 restrictions that “protect the elderly, while letting children and young adults live close to normal lives,” as Kulldorff put it in his essay.

“The declaration made clear that no scientific consensus existed for school closures and many other lockdown measures. In response, though, the attacks intensified—and even grew slanderous,” he wrote, naming former National Institutes of Health director Francis Collins as the one who ordered a “devastating published takedown” of the declaration.

Testifying before Congress in January, Collins reaffirmed his previous statements attacking the Great Barrington Declaration.

Despite the coordinated effort against it, the document has over 939,000 signatures in favor of age-based focused protection.

The Great Barrington Declaration’s authors, who advocated the quick reopening of schools, have been vindicated by recent studies that confirm pandemic-era school closures were, in fact, detrimental to student learning. The data show that students from third through eighth grade who spent most of the 2020–21 school year in remote learning fell more than half a grade behind in math scores on average, while those who attended school in person dropped a little over a third of a grade, according to a New York Times review of existing studies. In addition to learning losses, school closures did very little to stop the spread of Covid, studies show.

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